


Metaphorically

by Monocytogenes



Category: Gotham (TV)
Genre: Awkward Flirting, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-02
Updated: 2015-02-02
Packaged: 2018-03-10 05:01:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 398
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3277685
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Monocytogenes/pseuds/Monocytogenes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Nobody's going to write love songs about the brain."</p>
<p>Eddie attempts to flirt.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Metaphorically

“You know what I’ve always found interesting?”

“I have no idea, Ed.”

“How people still represent the heart as the source of emotions. I mean, obviously it’s a very old idea—the ancient Egyptians believed so much in it that they actually used to preserve the hearts of their dead and throw out the brain—but you would think that in this day and age people would be past that.”

Kristen heaves a sigh. “It’s poetic. Nobody’s going to write love songs about the brain.”

“Why not? The heart’s just a pump. The brain is so much more complicated and mysterious.”

“Yours sure is.”

She half-smirks, and he’s silent for a moment. She doesn’t have to glance back at him to know the expression crossing his face—the clouding of his features as he tries to determine her intent. At one time she’d thought it little more than nervousness, but by now she can recognize the way he puzzles over her signals, uselessly grappling for meaning.

“I find you complicated too,” he says at last. “In a good way.”

“What’s a ‘good way?’”

He thinks. “Like when I have to do spatter analysis on a really messy scene. It takes a lot of mapping and measuring but then, if I’m lucky, it all becomes clear. I match it up to the autopsy findings and I can tell exactly who was standing where and how they were hit. It’s great.”

“Did you really just compare me to a bunch of bloodstains?”

“I thought it was an apt metaphor.”

She rolls her eyes. “I think that’s your problem. You don’t know how to be poetic. You’re all brain and no heart.”

Eddie looks down at his shoes. Kristen looks down at the paperwork in front of her, trying to find where she left off, but she can’t focus with him standing there, absorbed in his uneasy pondering.

“Ed, could you please—”

He offers his hand to her, his slim fingers balled into a fist. She stares at his fist, stares at him, then tentatively touches her palm to his knuckles, thinking he might be trying to initiate some weird handshake.

“The average human heart is about the size of a fist,” he informs her. “So this is mine, for you. Metaphorically.”

She gapes, slightly openmouthed, and forgets to jerk her hand back as she says, “God, you’re weird.”

Eddie smiles.


End file.
